Dragon's Fire [PUP Squad Alpha 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (2 page)

Although, considering his own midlife crisis seemed to include an infatuation for one sweet, softly spoken, gently curved,
human
female, maybe he’d stay right away from his squadmates for now.

“So should we tell her?” Nathan asked, showing the first hint of indecision Brody had seen from the guy. But of course, thanks to his overactive libido and excellent imagination, Brody was thinking on a completely different subject. It took a moment to realize Nathan was talking about telling her about her telekinetic ability, not the fact that Brody seemed to be fantasizing over her.

Finally he managed to force out what he hoped was a reasonable answer. “She’ll have to know eventually, but maybe it would be better to wait until the situation is more stable.”

Nathan just raised an eyebrow at him. The truth was that with a pixie assassin on her tail, Ava’s situation was never again likely to be stable. Not only were pixies impossible to kill, there was always another to take her place. Brody winced at the thought. He still couldn’t understand a patriarchal society where they sent their women to do the wet work. It just didn’t seem right.

“At least let me get a message to Alex first. Maybe he can get someone to dig into her past.”

“So you think it’s something to do with the Oracle’s murder? I mean, I know that’s why the women are being targeted by the assassins in the first place, but do you think that’s where Ava’s skill is coming from?” The guy grinned like this was very exciting news, but until they knew anything for sure Brody was going to reserve judgment. He’d never heard of an Oracle passing on her knowledge to anyone other than a paranormal child—and then only a select few species. As far as he knew, it wasn’t even possible for a human to receive the Oracle’s knowledge. Considering the seemingly small capacity of the human brain, he doubted they had enough room to store that much knowledge anyway.

“Anything’s possible,” he said with a shrug. Hell, considering that he was a dragon-shifter lusting after a female from a whole different species,
everything
was possible.

* * * *

Nathan watched Brody watching Ava. He’d known the guy long enough to know what he was thinking. Very simply put he was the kid looking in the candy store window wishing for things that were simply not good for him. Nathan had met Brody’s family once, but it had been enough to convince him that Brody was the odd one out in that group.

At the time, Nathan had tried to convince himself that Brody’s family members weren’t as dangerous or as fanatical as they seemed, but that was kind of like ignoring the guy who sets off the metal detectors at the airport—stupid and possibly deadly.

Brody Carmichael came from a long line of narrow-minded, elitist snobs who thought humans were nothing more than overabundant insects. If Nathan hadn’t been the guy to stop the assassination attempt on Brody’s father, he doubted he would have gotten any acknowledgment of his existence at all. There were times when he wondered if he’d even have gotten out of there alive under different circumstances. What would have happened if he hadn’t been so good at his job? He was very glad he hadn’t had a reason to find out.

“I’m going to jog to the pay phone in town and check in with Dave. Hopefully they’ve found some of the others by now.”

Brody nodded, but didn’t take his eyes off Ava. “If we’re not here when you get back, we’ll meet you at the rendezvous point.”

Nathan knew exactly how Brody would get Ava to their rendezvous point, and he felt his stomach rebel in protest. Dimensional jumping was only slightly less stomach churning than slip travel. Given a choice, Nathan would rather crawl across broken glass than choose either. The “bounce” travel favored by warlocks was less nauseating, but the landings were sometimes painful enough for him to want to avoid them permanently. He glanced at Ava and wondered how she would cope. The first time Nathan “jumped” with Brody he’d literally felt like he’d been slammed in the head with a brick. Things hadn’t improved much over time—for any of his transport choices—and it was a major understatement to say he preferred
any
other means of travel.

“I’ll be quick,” he said as he headed out. He entered the code to disengage the perimeter alarm for that door only and waited on the other side until he heard the system reengage.

The jog into town took less than five minutes and could barely be called a workout, but he waited anxiously for Dave to answer his phone. Even before the police officer got his greeting out, Nathan started talking over him.

“It’s Nathan. Any news?”

“Not that I know of,” Dave said in a strange-sounding voice. “I just got off the phone with Ronan. He wants a team meeting tomorrow.”

“Sure,” Nathan said, trying to sound like Ronan’s request was just routine. Whatever was happening, Dave clearly wasn’t comfortable telling him on the phone. He didn’t waste time asking questions. He said good-bye, hung up, and jogged back to the safe house, studiously ignoring the inclination to sprint back. If someone were watching him, the last thing he wanted to do was tip them off to a change in the case.

He dropped the feigned casualness the moment he stepped inside the house. Brody was waiting for him, arms crossed over his chest, looking every inch the soldier that he was.

“Sit-rep,” he said quickly.

Nathan smiled at the military lingo. He’d never been in the defense forces himself, but he’d spent enough time around ex-soldiers to know Brody wanted a report on the situation.

“Ronan wants to meet us at a secure location.”

Brody nodded. He’d crossed paths with Ronan often enough to know where that location was. Simply put it meant Ronan’s “housekeeper” was currently waiting in Ronan’s home office for the paranormal members of his team to “jump,” “slip,” or “bounce” into the house and collect the required coordinates to Ronan’s location. It was a very efficient and secure way of setting up a safe rendezvous.

It also meant something big was happening.

* * * *

Brody glanced around the room. So far nine men, five from his own PUP squad—Samuel, Thomas, Wilson, Dyson and West—stood around talking quietly. He recognized the other four as Nathan’s coworkers from Deeks Security. It wasn’t unusual for the two groups to work together but it was a relief to see so many trusted faces. Ava’s safety was his first priority.

They’d waited for her to fall asleep, and then Brody had carried Ava and Nathan through the dimensional jump to get here. He’d left them in a room across the hall. Nathan hadn’t been in very good condition, and he suspected that Ava wouldn’t fare much better if she woke before the effects of jump travel wore off, but Brody had no doubt Nathan would defend the woman with his life if the need arose—nauseated or not. Fortunately, in this secure location, he shouldn’t need to.

“We’ve had a break in the case,” Ronan said as soon as he walked in the door.

“Well sort of,” the unfamiliar man beside him said with a worried expression. Brody was pretty sure he was human. “It’s not exactly the type of information I’m going to share with my bosses, but Ronan and Alex were able to capture the pixie assassin. It seems she was working alone.” He let out a deep breath, his worry leaking through even as he tried to hide it. “That’s where the good news ends though. My sister, Kali—she’s the one Ronan and Alex have been protecting—has started showing signs of paranormal abilities.”

“Like telekinesis?” Brody asked quickly.

“How did you know?” the man asked, sounding both aggressive and very worried for his sister’s welfare.

“Because Ava seems to have it, too. We don’t think she’s even noticed, but we suspect it’s how she survived that first encounter with the pixie.”

“I’m kind of glad to hear that. If they’re going to be targets of assassins, the least fate can do is give them a fighting chance,” Samuel said with a nod of approval.

“True,” Brody agreed with the vampire. He turned his attention back to the human. “So is the threat neutralized?”

“For the moment,” he said. The man rubbed his forehead tiredly. “Ronan will fill you in on the details. It seems the assassin was working alone, but it’s only a matter of time before someone notices she’s missing. If they start poking around into what she was doing, it’ll lead them straight to the same conclusions. This time I doubt they’ll only send one.”

“What’s your plan, Ronan?” Brody knew the man well. Ronan always had a plan or two or six.

“We’re setting up new identities for all of the identified targets,” Ronan said, sounding his usual controlled self.

“We haven’t been able to locate them all, but when we do we need to turn their lives upside down and inside out in an effort to keep them alive.” The human took a deep breath in an obvious attempt to be more optimistic. “But we think we can offer them at least some sort of normal life.”

Ronan smiled and leaned against the table behind him. “A few years ago I purchased a town called Sugarvale. It’s fairly isolated, and at the moment is little more than a ghost town, but I think it’ll work well as secure home for these women. Alex and I have already set up a home for our wife.” Ronan grinned at the obvious surprise on the faces of the men in the room, but he didn’t explain his sudden change in marital status. “We plan to do the same for anyone else we can locate. If they’re all showing extrasensory skills, then it’s doubly important to get them to a safe location.”

The human nodded in agreement, but it was Brody’s werewolf squadmate, Thomas, who asked the next question. “So are the human women all the Oracle’s receptacle?”

“We still don’t know anything for sure. We have no way of knowing exactly what the Oracle did, or why she planned to do it, but we do know it was why she was killed. If she somehow passed her information on to humans, there had to be a reason for it.”

They spent the next couple of hours discussing the case, pooling their information in the hopes that it might lead them to the missing women. As the meeting broke up, Ronan called Brody over.

“How’s Ava doing?”

“Considering what she’s been through, she’s coping pretty well. Spends a lot of time reading.”

Ronan nodded. “Does she understand what’s going on?”

“We haven’t explained anything to her.” He hesitated, wondering if the next words to come out of his mouth would make him sound like a fool. “The thing is…sometimes I get the feeling she knows more than she lets on.”

Ronan’s grin was unexpected. “Kali has the same skill. She describes it as ‘knowing’ stuff she shouldn’t know. She can’t explain where the information comes from, only that she knows it’s true.”

“So Ava…”

“Is very likely to understand more about the paranormal world than we do.”

Brody raised an eyebrow—he was a paranormal after all—but Ronan just gave him a look that suggested he had a lot to learn. Hell, maybe he did when it came to human women with extrasensory skills.

“I’ve got a couple of trusted friends helping rebuild the town of Sugarvale. There’s a house ready to go if you don’t mind living without a kitchen for a day or two.”

Brody smiled. “As long as we have somewhere to plug in the coffee machine, we should be okay.”

They’d moved to a new safe house three weeks ago. This one was also in the middle of nowhere, but at least she had neighbors. She’d only met Kali, Ronan, and Alex a few times, but it had been very obvious that the men weren’t just protecting Kali. They were very much in love with her.

Of course that had led Ava’s rather fertile imagination into forbidden territory, which had resulted in her downloading even more erotic romance stories in an effort to distract herself. She realized that to an outsider that action might seem self-defeating under the circumstances, but she somehow hoped that by reading about perfect men in a perfect fictional world that it would somehow highlight the failings of the men protecting her. So far it hadn’t worked—Nathan and Brody still seemed flawless—yet she’d blown her entire monthly book budget on erotic romance stories. It was either read the books or talk to the two men currently starring in her nightly dreams
and
her daytime imaginings. She’d already spent far too much time enjoying their company. At this stage, reading seemed less dangerous for her heart.

Ava tried to control her breathing as she read through a rather passionate encounter between the lead characters in the story she was currently devouring. Again she questioned her choice of reading material, but after everything that had happened in the past few weeks, she felt the need for happy endings.

Even though both men seemed to be trying to protect her from it, she knew that she faced more than a crazed serial killer. The child who’d attacked her in her own home had apparently appeared out of nowhere. Ava hadn’t seen nor heard a door or window open and had later found them still locked. If that hadn’t been ample proof, the officer’s startled exclamation when the child had seemed to disappear by walking through an invisible doorway had been enough to convince her.

She’d actually worried for Nathan and Brody’s safety until she’d seen Brody light the burner on the stove with a flame from his mouth. He hadn’t realized she was in the room at the time, and she’d been careful not to give away what she saw, but it gave her a modicum of peace that it seemed the two men watching over her were equipped in ways ordinary police officers were not.